MDG 3 - Promote Gender Equality & Empower Women
MDG 3 worksheet click here for worksheet in French
** The specialized monthly curriculum for MDG 3 has been distributed to our groups and will be available here on line soon. Thank you for your patience.
Student Work
Community Leadership Group of Kenema, Sierra Leone
The major gender issues here seem to be commercial sex work and female genital mutilation. I have personally observed MANY very young women prostitutes (12-14 years old). FGM is a cultural ritual for some tribes. It is hard to tell people to change their culture, but it is starting to be seen as a human rights issue since the girls having it done are getting younger and younger, so they can really give consent.
We want to make a drama about commercial sex work, so show why and how it exists. We want to talk about the causes (poverty, parents being killed, lack of skills, etc), problems that can come from it (HIV, unwanted pregnancy, mental trauma, etc.) and the people involved (the young girls, the older male customers, the corrupt police and judges, etc.). They have 'cinemas' here where people pay to watch DVDs on a tv and we would like to distribute them there. They have been working on the script over the holidays.
SEE
What role does gender play in your community? Do you feel that women and men have equal rights in your community? Why or why not?
No, there are not equal rights because:
- MANY, MANY YOUNG FEMALE COMMERCIAL SEX WORKERS (many are 16 years old and younger)
- Causes:
- Poverty-girls use the money to buy clothes, pay their school fees, pay rent, sometimes to support their whole household (the parents know they are doing it and in some cases they tell them to do it)
- Lack of any supervision/care takers- they do not have parents, live on the street
- Lack of skills
- People pay for it-old and young locals, Lebanese, White men (they also videotape i
- Some young girls have to drop out of school because they are pregnant
- Men can have 2 wives, women cannot
- Men have to pay school fees, women do not
- Men have to do hard manual labor, women do not
- Men hold more posts in the government
- Men control the household most often
- Men have more responsibilities, must buy all food and clothes for the household
- There is a much higher female population than male, so women often get in fights over men, there is unfaithfulness
- Some men maltreat women: flogging, not feeding, no medical attention, drive them out of the house
- Women being raped
- The law is not enforced equally for men and women. If there is a dispute between a man and women that is brought to the police, the police usually side with the men (not women)
If you are female, do you feel empowered? How do you think other women in your community feel about gender equality, discrimination, and empowerment?
-Many women are upset about having their school fees paid. They men are jealous and harass them about it. Some boys purposefully get girls pregnant so they will be forced to drop out of school
Do females in your community have equal access to education and employment? Explain.
-Due to the past, when women had lower access to education and employment, the government created policies. These policies have not created gender inequality, they have made it so women now have far greater access to education and employment than men.
REFLECT
Do you feel as though gender equality and women’s empowerment is an issue that should be addressed in your community? Why or why not?
-Yes, it is an issue that needs to be addressed. The inequalities are causing problems in the community.
ACT
How could you help to achieve UN Development Goal 3? Can you think of a project that you and your peers might be able to design and implement in your community in order to help reach Goal 3?
- Talk to the government
- Pressure them to give free education to men as well as women
- Pressure them to create employment
- Contact the local radio station
- Tell young people that free condoms are available at the hospital
- Tell young people to abstain
- Tell people that rape is wrong and should stop
- Tell women to stop stealing other women’s husbands/boyfriends
- Tell men to be faithful
- Create income generating activities so that women can buy grass cutting machines, so not only men will have to do that type of work.
- Contact the police
- Tell them they must enforce the law equally. If they do not, contact higher officials.
- Tell them they must stop taking bribes and arrest those who rape
- Create a large banner that says that violence against women should stop. T-shirts could also be created.
- Have a large meeting at the soccer field. Use music to lure people in. Also advertise on the radio and in the newspaper. When there, speak about gender inequality.
- Project to stop commercial sex workers:
- Invite a sex worker to the group to educate more on the issue
- Appeal to the government, international NGO for micro-credit. This must include a personal budgeting aspect as well, or the girls will just spend all their money and become sex workers again.
- Appeal to the government for a vocational training center
- Meet with police and tell them to end bribery (i.e. stop having sex with the sex workers)
- Have an End Commercial Sex march. Lure people there by preparing food, having a brass band. Have t-shirts made.
- Create a drama about commercial sex work, the causes, the problems it causes (i.e. HIV, waste of limited resources, early pregnancy, etc.)
- Create a program were youth pretend to be buying the services of the girls, but then just take them home to their families and not pay them.
Funds can be raised for projects through international NGOs and the government office called the Family Support Unit. Funds could also be raised through creating a street cleaning project and asking the local government to then pay the youth for their efforts.
Riverside School of Lyndonville, Vermont, USA
We had Zoe Gascon visit our class. She works in a women's resource center in our town that helps women suffering from domestic abuse in particular. She taught us about how domestic abuse is not always signs of outright violence, but the intent to exert power and control over your partner. This can be done in lots of more subtle, private ways like coercion, intimidation, emotional abuse, using children, blame and economic control. We learned that her organization, Umbrella, helps 400 women each year in our community. We may invite Zoe back to ask her more questions and find out how we could serve their needs.
We read the story of Mrs. Jayalakshmi from the OWYP curriculum and worked on the concept map that goes with it. The students had a much harder time filling in the causes and effects than we expected to. We found Mrs. Jayalakshmi's story to be so specific that it was hard to generalize carefully. We also read the report of the Vermont Comission on Women to find statistics about gender equality in our own state, like the extent to which women have health insurance, the bullying that girls face in school, and the percentages of women serving on public boards. We found this report hard to make sense of as well, the statistics seemed miss leading and we ached for comparable information about men in our state.
Global Connections of Seattle, Washington, USA
Survey of Gender Equality in Our Community:
Do women have equal opportunities for education?
Yes! Girls and women in the United States enjoy the “unalienable rights” that entitle us to equality in opportunity. This definitely applies to education.
What laws are in effect to protect women’s rights?
The United Nations defined women’s rights in 1993 as “the human rights and of the girl are unalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.” This entitles the women of the United States to:
- Bodily integrity and autonomy;
- Vote (universal suffrage);
- Hold public office;
- Work ;
- Fair wages or equal pay;
- Own property and enter into legal contracts;
- Equal education;
- Serve in the military;
- To have marital, parental and religious rights.
Do women have an equal right to own property?
Yes. See above notes.
What percentage of women are employed outside the home (if they wish to be)?
According to the US Department of Labor 2007 census, 46% of the entire workforce is women. 56.6% of all women are employed or are looking actively for work. Roughly 75% of all women workers have full time jobs.
What percentage of women are business owners?
38% of women workers have management positions and roughly 26% of them own the business.
In what ways are women able to participate in decision making in your community?
In our local society, women are a key driving force behind all manners of decisions. From voting in political decision making to leading interests in school systems, women in Seattle and all of the Pacific Northwest enjoy being just as influential in their local communities as their male counterparts… and arguably sometimes more.
What percentage of your elected officials are women?
At the local level we have around 20% female elected officials in the state, spearheaded by our Washington State Governor, Christine Gregoire. At the Federal level, 23.5% of the legislative seats are represented by women.
What role does gender play in your community? Do you feel women and men have equal rights? Why /why not?
When our group discussed this prompt we at first struggled to see any inequalities in our own community. Seattle is a very progressive society and in comparison with the situation in much of the world scene today we are very equal. Yet we came to the realization that even though we may not see it very often the gender inequality is still apparent in our own community. In a way sexism hasn’t disappeared… it’s just gotten smarter.
In our laws men and women have equal rights , but unconsciously the underlying double standard that exists is very limiting to many young people. A few examples of the underground inequalities are the different sports offered to girls and boys that are “socially acceptable” or the hurtful stereotypes of men and women and how they should behave. What many fail to realize is that women’s rights as a mental step for our society cannot be achieved until men stop classifying themselves into the stereotypes of the “bread winner,” or head of the house etc… As women’s rights have progressed so far, it is now time to destroy the stereotype from the male end of the spectrum.
If you are Female, do you feel empowered….
Yes. The general standpoint of any woman in Seattle would be one of confidence. We are in many ways surpassing our male counterparts in being educationally successful here in Seattle. As far as jobs go, women in Seattle seem just as successful in creating stable careers.
Do females in your community have equal access to education /employment?
Yes, although some jobs still have a “subconscious bias” there is no noticeable discrimination.
Do you feel that gender equality and women’s empowerment should be addressed in your community?
In our community the only thing to combat is people’s subconscious expectations. This however should change with a few generations of empowered women on it’s own. The best thing to do is just encourage and praise driven women for their contributions to society. The double standard will more successfully change with time, not a frontal attack on men’s bias. This being said, women’s rights is doing very well here in Seattle and is not as crucial as other issues to work on.
How can you help achieve goal 3?
Being really positive about women’s empowerment and hailing those who have succeeded will spur more of the same. This subtle way of working towards the goal will promote social acceptance of it and send an inspiring message to the up coming generation of young women.
What project might we design?
In our brainstorming we came up with writing articles and trying to get them submitted to a local paper or creating a movie/documentary that could be exhibited here in Seattle as well as in other parts of the world.
Perfect Youth Group of Arusha, Tanzania
What role does gender play in your Community? Do you feel women and men have equal rights in your community? Why or why not?
-Any gender is respectively in our society.
We think that all of us have equal rights but on the other way boys are more superior than girls. Because we differ in different activities and performances in Community roles such as: Kind of jobs: There is other works which can only be performed by boys and not girls while there is others which can be performed with girls only but not boy. Mostly have works can be done by boys.
If you are a female, do you feel empowered? How do you think other women in your community feel about gender equality, discrimination and empowerment?
Yes I feel Empowered, due to the roles which I can play in my family as a Woman. Other Women still they don’t know about their Rights, so that made them to be discriminated more and more.
Do females in your community have equal access to education and employment? Explain.
I some places they have, It depends to the kind of work and which type of Education they do need. But in most Urban areas they do promote girls education and boys, but in rural areas this is a critical problem where by they don’t send their daughters to school but they force them to be married.
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REFLECT
The issue should be addressed in my community as to make girls proud to be as how they are. The Empowerment is very important because it can facilitate development within our Community.
ACT
Women should learn about their Rights,this wil be work through providing different workshop for Women and Men.
“WOMEN EMPOWERMENT CAMPAIGN PROJECT” will be the solution for this project, where by women will be able to unite and fight for their rights.
Click here to read more student thoughts on MDG 3
